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Trump Meets with Families of Abductees, Oct. 28, 2025

October 28, 2025 · The White House · 0:03:38

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump met in Tokyo on October 28, 2025, with the families of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea, alongside Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. Asked for his message to the families, the President said: “We are with the prime minister and her strong feeling. She’s got tremendous feeling.” He noted he had met some of the families before: “They’ve been looking for so many years, so long… I’ve met the families before and I’m with them all the way, and the US is with them all the way. And we’re with Japan and the prime minister.”

Asked whether he would raise the abductions with North Korea’s leader, the President said the matter had not yet been discussed on the trip — “we really haven’t. But we’ll be discussing it. We always have this in mind” — and recalled that the issue “started with Shinzo Abe,” whose advocacy he credited with bringing it to him. “It is my honor to be with you again, and we will do everything within our power,” he told the families.

Why it matters

The abductee families meeting is a fixed obligation of U.S. presidential visits to Japan, and this one carried the question forward to the President’s stated openness to meeting Kim Jong-un on the same trip — the families’ cause is the human stake in any renewed U.S.–North Korea contact.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Meets with Families of Abductees” (official upload, embedded above; Tokyo, Japan). Remarks as delivered at the meeting.